“No longer the haven of tolerance”? The press and discursive shifts on immigration in Sweden 2010–2022

Abstract

The article explores key trajectories of Swedish press discourse on immigration in the period 2010–2022 which covers a variety of socio-economic and political developments including parliamentary entry and growth of the immigration-critical Swedish far-right. Analysing the press across its key variants (liberal/conservative, nationwide/regional, broadsheet/tabloid), the article points to how dynamics of the press discourse on immigration locates within the key “discursive shifts” in the wider Swedish public sphere, including those related to regular political events such as national-parliamentary elections (of 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022) as well as those marked by other, pivotal contextual factors such as the 2015–2016 European “Refugee Crisis.” Deploying a systematic, multi-method approach from within critical discourse studies, the article leads to a number of findings, including on the gradual change and the apparent negativisation of the analysed press discourse over time. It highlights that the increasing hybridity and ambivalence of discursive constructions of immigration in the press are among the key factors underlying their alignment with the wider logic of the public sphere in Sweden, and especially with developments in Swedish political discourse in recent years.